


Open All Night (Diner, Part One of Two)

by spuffyduds



Series: Diner [1]
Category: due South
Genre: 1000-3000 words, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-08
Updated: 2010-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds





	Open All Night (Diner, Part One of Two)

"So, you ever make it with a guy, Fraser?"

***********************************************************

Ray didn't mean to do this tonight. Had no plans to--shoot their whole partnership all to shit, probably. They'd been ungodly late at the 2-7 slogging through paperwork after a big bust, and Ray kept telling Fraser he didn't have to help, and Fraser kept saying things like "Judging by your typing skills, Ray, apparently I _do_."

And when they walked out Ray was tired and groggy and out of it, or he would have noticed that Fraser was steering them toward what Ray had started to think of as the Hobbit Diner, and voted really hard to go somewhere else. Because the Hobbit Diner had pretty good food--but it was all booths, no tables, and the booths were designed for a much shorter species.

Fraser always seemed okay with it, but then Fraser slept on a _cot_. For such a big guy, he seemed happy to just perch in the tiniest spaces and stay there. Maybe it was a Canadian thing. "Oh, let me take up as little space as possible, to be polite! If I need to turn around I'll just rotate in place!"

He could probably dance on the head of a pin, Ray thought sleepily, and where the hell did _that_ come from? But Ray, now, he was all legs ("and one of them must be hollow," his mom used to say, watching him eat his seventh hot dog.) The only way he could get by in the damn Bilbo booths was either sitting sideways, knees bent up and feet on the cushions, which made the old and scary waitresses give him the evil eye, or end up in this weird sort of alternating-knees thing with Fraser under the table, like meshed gears.

Fraser just insisted it was the only diner in Chicago that used buckwheat in their pancakes.

But they were in the door of the diner before Ray got his head together to protest, and god he didn't need this tonight. Usually he was on a high after they finished off a case like this, but this one had taken forever, weeks of late nights, and he'd started to think, Jesus, even if we get _these_ guys off the streets there'll just be _other_ guys moving in with business propositions for the runaways at the bus stops. And he knew you couldn't think that way and keep doing anybody any good, but he was worn out.

And he didn't need to be bumping into Fraser under the table and watching him cut up his pancakes all brisk and efficient, and watching him eat, and watching him drink, and just watching him. He didn't need to be _wondering_, again, whether he was ever going to bring it up. Whether Fraser was remotely _interested_ in that kind of thing, and if he was, whether Ray was anywhere near good-looking enough, or smart enough or anything enough.

Fraser ordered pancakes and Ray ordered whatever omelet was at the top of the list. And by the time the food came he was just sick with how _familiar_ this felt, because it was Stella again, early and late. The middle was fine, the middle was what he tried to remember, but early was "Am I good enough?" and late was "I'm not, anymore, am I?" Ray was starting to feel like--a _dog_, and not one like Dief with at least a _little_ fucking dignity. One of those little yippy ones that was looking at you every second, going, "You like me? You still like me? Huh?"

And he was so fucking tired of it. And he opened his mouth.

**************************************************************

"So, you ever make it with a guy, Fraser?"

Fraser finished chewing, put his fork down, said, "Make what?"

But Ray'd seen the little wobble in his movement. He actually clinked the fork slightly against his plate, putting it down. That was--a giant spit take, for Fraser. That was Roger Rabbit's jaw hitting the ground.

Fraser knew what he was talking about.

"Don't pull that shit," Ray said.

"What are you _talking_\--"

"Don't," Ray said. And he sounded awful, high-pitched and choky, he sounded just like he did before Stella gave him a pitying look and shut the door. Or before she gave him a pitying look and let him in, which always turned out to be worse.

Fraser didn't give him that look, though. Didn't look at him at all, kept studying his pancakes.

So, Ray guessed, that was an answer right there.

"Sorry," he said, and he'd be getting up and going any second now, as soon as he got enough energy. Any energy at all. He used to have so much of it, too much, where'd it go?

"Ray," Fraser said, softly, still not looking up. But he shifted in his seat, and Ray realized that under the table, where their knees were Ray Fraser Ray Fraser, that was shifting too. Fraser's inside leg was pressing out against Ray's outside leg, and Fraser's outside leg was pressing in against Ray's inside leg, and the legs were complicated under there.

Ray considered things for a minute. Fraser wasn't looking at him yet, was apparently studying the _atoms_ of his food now. But he was blushing, all up his neck and along the jaw, and the knees were—the knees were not accidental.

Ray took a deep breath. Slid a hand under the table and cupped it over one of Fraser's warm kneecaps.

And Fraser looked up. He looked a little panicked but he just _nodded_ at Ray, like they'd _settled_ something, and went back to eating his pancakes.

This was weird. Ray'd had all these fantasies. A lot of them, yeah, where Fraser made the first move and he didn't have to. But in all the ones where Ray managed to speak up, the second he got any kind of a _yes_ (and he _always_ got a yes, they were _fantasies_) it was all hot and sweaty and now now now. But he was so fucking tired, and it felt so good, just his hand curved around that spot, that he felt like he could sit forever in this stupid diner, watching Fraser eat.

 

\--END--


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